"What?"
Cal looked at the man in confusion. He didn't understand what he meant by survive, but he felt something bad was about to come.
"Simple," the man smiled, his eyes giving off mysterious vibe. "I shall send you to a world full of monstrous beings. Your goal is to survive until the time limit."
He then added, "But I won't say how long it would be."
"What?!" Cal gazed at him incredulously, trying to understand if this guy was serious. However, upon seeing the man's calm expression, there was no doubt he was serious about it.
"So you are going to send me to…what? World of monstrous beings?"
"Indeed," the man affirmed, nodding his head. "But there is another way to pass the condition. That is…to take the head of that world's leader."
Cal fell silent upon hearing this. He weighed his choices right now. Did he have to agree about such thing? When he heard the condition from this man, he knew that survival in this so-called world of monstrous beings was naturally not easy. He did not even know if it was within his capabilities.
Then, Cal suddenly remembered something.
"Wait," Cal finally said. "I have a mediocre talent in terms of magic, how am I supposed to survive that world."
"That's the neat part, you don't."
The man sneered as Cal's eyes opened widely. Then, he saw the man flicking his finger and something happened. The ground rumbled like a powerful earthquake and it split open.
Cal looked at his situation in shock. Before he could even say anything, the ground swallowed him, falling into great heights.
What the fuck!?
Cal cursed inwardly as he looked upward, where the man just stood on the edge and stared at him calmly, as though mocking his fate right now.
"You fucking bastard!"
Cal screamed atop of his lungs toward the man whose figure was becoming smaller as he continued falling. He couldn't believe that man will just do him dirty like this.
After a few moments, all he could see was darkness. There was no light above him, there was literally nothing in his vision. But one things was certain, he could still feel that he was falling rapidly downward, as though he fell down to the abyss.
After a few moments, Cal saw a light from a direction he didn't really recognize. But since the light was becoming bigger, he reckoned there was something downward.
As the light's brightness was becoming more intense, Cal involuntarily closed his eyes for he can't really bear such an intense luminosity.
But when he opened it again, he saw the ground increasing his size until—
Bang!
***
Pain! Excruciating pain!
Even the pain from getting stabbed was nothing like this. It was an extremely painful sensation that he did not want to experience it again. He felt as though every part of his body was wounded, or maybe even worse. It was as though someone skinned him alive or they chopped his body into parts while still maintained consciousness.
"AHHHH!" Cal screamed in pain as he gritted his teeth. His body was shaking intensely, his forehead producing a lot of sweat. Even though he can't really see anything right now, his fingers dug through the soil and gripped it.
After ten minutes or so, the excruciating pain was finally dissipating. Cal slowly opened his eyes as light entered his vision. When he finally cleared his groggy mind, he found himself surrounded by huge trees and the grasses were even taller than humans.
Cal stood up, his legs still shaking. He carefully inspected the surroundings. It seemed like he fell into some kind of wilderness. The trees were darkish-red in color, their roots protruding from the ground.
But that's not what caught most of his attention. When he looked at the sky, he saw it to be crimson color, looking like painted by blood. His eyes widened in shock when he saw 4 moons and 1 sun displayed in the sky, coexisting with each other.
This was the first time he head seen this. Back on Amaranth Kingdom, he could only see one moon every night. But here, even though it was extremely bright and hot, there were actually four moons! What in the world is happening here?
"Seriously, where the heck am I now?" Cal mumbled as he started to walk around, carefully observing the environment around him. He noticed that most of the huge trees actually has no leaf. There were some that did have leaves, but it seemed they were quite uncommon.
Squelch!
Cal's entire being suddenly froze as his right foot stepped on something…squishy and wet. He could smell the stench of something, and it was unbearable but he didn't know what it was. He gulped many times, trying decide whether he wanted to see what he just stepped on. Should he just get out of here? He didn't know.
And then, he decided.
"Fine."
Cal steeled his resolve as he looked at the object on the ground. What he saw made him horrified. It was a grotesque scene of flesh and blood, with the blood splattered and spread on the ground. It looked like a puddle now, and it made him nauseous.
Cal immediately retracted his gaze and approached a nearby tree, trying to vomit letting out a sound "blurggh!". However, no matter how loud he tried to vomit, nothing came out. Not even a saliva, which caused Cal to be utterly dumbfounded. What happened to the food he ate in the meeting?
But when he thought about it, his main body was outside of this mysterious world. He was probably a soul right now. Cal tried to pinch himself and it actually hurts.
"Ouch!"
He stopped pressing his fingers together and laughed bitterly, the scent of that abomination still invading his nostrils. Whose fucking corpse was that shit?
For some reason, he turned his gaze to that disgusting scene again and noticed something. There were some sort of fabric that was full of blood, with royal insignia engraved on the right chest (though it was now painted red).
"Now that I think about it…" Cal looked at that royal cloth, horrified. "I-isn't that my royal uniform?"
That's when it all came back to him. He looked at himself, and noticed that he was actually unscathed right now.
"Don't tell me…"
Cal tried to deny entertaining those thoughts, but the more he thought about it, the more it was likely to be possible. There was no one wearing that beside him, a prince. And each princes of the Amaranth Kingdom has differences in patterns of their royal uniform, representing their unique identity as a royalty.
"That corpse, it is me."
When he finally uttered those words, his legs shook violently and they felt really weak. And put his but on the ground but his gaze still on the corpse. He can't see anything that resembled his face, but it was definitely him. Did he experienced death from the fall?
When he thought about the painful feeling he felt earlier, but there was no slightest bit of bruise or wound in his body right now, it was entirely possible. He actually just got revived! But in a perfect copy of his original body. However, he was a soul right now, how is it possible that he has flesh and blood right now?
There were just so many questions in Cal's mind and he didn't really know what to answer. This situation was just too strange. Whatever the answer was, that man probably knew this.
When he thought of that man who opened the ground from above and let him fall to this world, his face darkened as hatred rose within him. That bastard was toying with him, no doubt. Giving him second chance was probably a bullcrap that guy made up.
Then, he stood up again and looked everywhere, trying to think. He wanted to scream right now, to curse that bastard, but he knew nothing will come out of it. He needed to think of a solution right now.
"This is troublesome."
Cal laughed bitterly. Now he found himself in a weird and awkward situation.